MIGUEL INDURAIN was 32 yesterday, but it was not a birthday he will want to remember. The first part of the celebrations were the same as they have been since 1991: a vast birthday cake presented to the five-time Tour winner in the start village amid a vast scrum of press and fans.

That was as festive as Indurain's day got. In the afternoon, in front of a huge throng of Basque fans perched like gannets on a cliff on the steep roads leading to the Hautacam ski station, what remained of his chances of a sixth Tour win were destroyed by a rampant Bjarne Riis.

The Dane's second stage win of the race gives him a comfortable lead, and led him to blurt out after the finish: "I should win now."

Hautacam consists of one small building on a bleak, green hillside, and has provided brutal and heroic spectacle on both occasions that the Tour has finished here. In 1994, as this year, it was the only climb of consequence at the end of a long stage across the plains of Aquitaine. The peloton hits the 1:12 slopes at some 30 miles per hour, then slows and shatters like a wave breaking on a rock. Then it is every man to his own painful rhythm uphill for eight leg-shattering miles.

There is no respite. Indurain has been both victor and vanquished here. In 1994, his incredible acceleration through thick mist effectively won him the Tour and destroyed Tony Rominger.

This year, in baking sun, the Swiss was again allotted a bit part: when he slipped off the back of the small lead group which formed after the first grinding impact with the gradient, it was Indurain who upped the pace. For a few seconds, history repeated itself: Indurain accelerated and Rominger grovelled.

Then, as his team-mate, Jan Ullrich, maintained the pace, Riis glided back down the group. It looked like weakness, but he was merely sizing up the opposition. "I wanted to see how they all were, and they all seemed to be flat out. I said it's now or never, you must win the Tour now."

Two scaring attacks followed: "The first time I didn't go 100 per cent, I just wanted to put the others in trouble. Then I went flat out."

It was a gesture of supreme confidence, the like of which has not been seen since the early 1980s, when Bernard Hinault and Laurent Fignon could afford the luxury of toying with the opposition in this way. Intriguingly, Riis was Fignon's chief domestique at the end of the Frenchman's career, and he thanked the Frenchman publicly for the advice he has received.

While Riis forged ahead, spurred on by the knowledge of the havoc he was creating behind, Indurain almost came to a painful halt as the effort he had made in trying to stay with the Dane made itself felt. The pedals hardly turned. the proud head bowed over the handlebars, the grimace became desperate. Just to rub it in, Rominger found his second wind and passed on the right, without a look in his old rival's direction.

In the next four painful, slow-motion miles, Indurain lost almost two-and-a-half minutes - and had he not come round towards the end, and Riis felt the strain of his all-out effort, it would have been far more.

As he entered the final kilometre through a forest of red, white and green Basque flags, Indurain threw an apologetic look to the fans who had come across the border to cheer him on. "I tried to follow Riis three times, the fourth time I blew up, and after that I couldn't follow anyone," he said.

"The gap between us is now unbridgeable. It was a day which had to come - and don't talk to me about next year."

The turnaround in Indurain's status was summed up when Riis commented that he would be happy if Big Mig could win today's stage, because it goes to his house. But it won't be easy."

It will be an eight-hour, 266km epic over four major climbs.